Important Things to Consider before Launching Your E-commerce Store
There are so many legal and profitable ways to make money online. Whether it’s a full-time or side business, the right knowledge will allow you to dominate your chosen niche. E-commerce is one of these profitable ventures.
While it seems catchy to join the trend of opening an online store, many run into this venture without accurate prior knowledge and planning. If you are considering moving into e-commerce or about to open your own virtual store, here are eight important things to consider before you launch out.
1. Choose Your Product or Service Offering
You cannot have an e-commerce business without a product or service. Choosing what you would sell is the first step to this journey. It is advisable that you don’t mimic what works in the business of a friend or relative for your own location; the playing fields might just be different. This is why market research is needed in choosing the products or services that apply to your geography.
2. Choose Your Target Audience
After doing your market research, the next practical thing to put into consideration is to know your customer. You would need to answer questions like:
- Who do I want to sell to?
- Which devices do they use?
- What social media platforms are they on?
- What are their buying preferences?
- What is their demography?
- What is their geography?
- What are their cultural inhibitors?
Answers to these will help you come up with a viable e-commerce business strategy.
3. Selecting a Domain Name and Registering Your Business
Once you have determined your product or service and the audience you want to sell to, you can go on to choose a unique identity for your e-commerce business. This identity or name should encompass what you do. Beyond choosing a name and building an identity, you would need to register it as the law requires. You can register a domain name for online identity but it has to be unique just as you would do with a physical store or business.
4. Choosing E-commerce Technologies
Choosing the right platforms for your e-commerce business also matters. It is advisable to get expert knowledge on this. There are several platforms available to potential e-commerce entrepreneurs. These platforms solve different problems for businesses. Some of the top e-commerce platforms today include:
- BigCommerce
- Shopify
- Wix
- Shift4Shop
- WooCommerce
- Volusion
- Prestashop
- Weebly
- Squarespace
- Magento
Whichever one of these you decide to go with would determine hosting requirements and your choice of hosting services.
5. Designing Your E-commerce Website
You would also need to decide what kind of interface you want your customers to see when they come on your website. The type of e-commerce business you do would determine what design would work for your website. With the help of a professional, you can tailor your website to meet the peculiarities of your product or service. To achieve this, you could run through a range of examples on the internet with your designer or simply build yours from scratch.
6. Programming
After the design concepts comes the deeper aspect of programming your e-commerce portal. If this is done well, the end game would be a high-quality eCommerce website where UX and usability are top-notch. You would need to integrate key extensions and third-party software for your website. Some important building blocks to consider include SEO, performance optimization, and conversion optimization. Also, ensure that your customers face no hassles with the payment gateway and checking out.
7. Content Creation
You would need to plan for how you’d get the word out about what you’re selling. Aim for your content to be dynamic, published on different channels, and engaging to your audience or customers. If content creation is done well, it could give you an edge over competitors who sell similar products as you. Content creation can be used to win the heart of your audience and to convince them that your product is better or different. When you prove to your audience that you’re worth listening to, they would automatically respond by showing that you’re worth buying from.
8. Driving Traffic
It’s not enough just to have an e-commerce platform up and running. You should also plan for how you would drive targeted traffic to your store. To start, you could begin with gathering data about visitors to your website and running tailored marketing campaigns. These can be achieved with tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel for a start. Traffic to your website could be organic (visitors who come as a result of unpaid marketing e.g blog posts) or paid (targeting specific audiences for a fee e.g Facebook ads).
I’ll stop here for now. Hopefully, by now, you’re able to tell if you really do need an e-commerce store or if you’re just doing it ‘cos it’s cool.